Slavery at Mansion House Farm

According to the 1799 slave inventory taken at Mount Vernon, there were eighty-seven slaves on the Mansion House Farm in the summer of 1799 (this number does not include two men—Peter Hardiman, who was rented from Martha Washington's former daughter-in-law, and Elish, who belonged to Martha Washington outright in 1802 and may have been purchased prior to George Washington's death. The list also does not include the eleven men who worked and lived at Washington's mill and distillery). In 1799, the total population at the "Home House" included fifty-nine adults between the ages of about fourteen and ninety, and twenty-eight children under the age of fourteen. While all of the women in this group appear to have been single or widowed, the majority of the men (83.3%) living at Mansion House Farm were married and had wives and children living elsewhere. Forty-six of the fifty-nine adults (77.97%) had been living on the Mansion House Farm for at least thirteen years, since 1786.